4 comments:

3 cities are already in Gadafi hands.In Bengazi there will be blood bath.I was convinced left meant to care about human rights and peoples power.It looks people in the left do not feel particularly disturbed when mad dictators butcher their people.Why Chile Pinochet was so unpopular among the left ?After all he spilled much less blood than Gadafi.Ahh.., I had already forgotten !!!!Salvador Allende was a socialist.., he claimed to be a leftist..,so the rightist guy that butchered Salvador Allende followers was a bad guy.Gadafi was for many years anti american.., a leftist..,so he has the green light to butcher his own people.

Pedro, I won't pretend to understand what you're trying to say. Are you suggesting Pinochet was OK? That socialists shouldn't have sided with the labour movement and the left in Chile against Pinochet?

What I know for sure is that if Western powers had threatened Pinochet with military action, socialists wouldn't have supported them. It would have been clear they had their own motives, and also that military intervention would not help ordinary people fighting for their own future.

Of course Western governments were happy to support Pinochet, however awful his crimes. It was politically expedient for them to do so. Just as - until recently - it was useful to have friendly relations with Gaddafi. But now they see a chance to restore some lost influence in the Arab world, hence the rhetoric about a 'no fly zone'.

Socialists support the Libyan people in their revolution against a corrupt and tyrannical regime. They don't support imperialist states opportunistically using the situation in a cynical bid to assert their power or present a 'humanitarian' image. The Libyan people need to fight the old regime themselves, as they are doing.

A pretty miserable and shameful collection of excuses for leavinging the Libyan people to the tender mercies of Gaddafi: contrast with communists and internationalists' attitude to the Spanish civil war. Also, note your shameful link with the right-wing Tory isolationist Simon Jenkins. A disgrace!

Shiraz Socialist is a blog associated with AWL, which still claims to be a marxist group. It's remarkable that an ostensibly socialist group should be attacking Simon Jenkins from the right. Advocating military intenvention is not a credible left-wing or anti-imperialist position. In the Spanish Civil War, the left didn't call for Western powers to launch a military assualt on the Franco regime. It should therefore be obvious that such comparisons are plain daft.